Happy birthday to me, I get to start college instead of color the next couple of pages of ETM. What a joyous occasion! Yeah, I did these two pages months ago for a local comic contest (Ninth place!). All I had left to do is fix the dialogue, since I had to change the gaming jokes, and flip the art, since they weren't too keen on my manga style last year. That also makes today's and Sunday's pages extra long from the contest's printing requirements. Fun for all here.

And now, an explanation. This ended up being my little archaeological rant. I really got into my art history class, and the subtle differences between Greek and Roman architecture were one of the things we really focused on. Being as immersed in video gaming as I am, I pretty much immediately noticed all the mistakes made in "ancient ruins." So, I started making fun of not only this trend, but archeological mistakes in media in general. Today's joke may be the wayshrines of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion; it's been quite some time since I pencilied or inked these, so I'm mostly going on memory. I'll have to go check whether they even have Ionic columns, as I could've sworn they had Doric. Still, I seem to have drawn a rotunda, a Roman invention, with Ionic columns, a Greek column mostly phased out by the height of the Roman empire. Please, do note these things when doing any form of creation of media. Of course, I just admitted to going on memory, so even I'm not immune to this.

There's your lesson and my soapbox for today. Go out and take a walk. You deserve it if you sat through that. Sorry.

A little known fact is that I used to be a huge Sonic fan. Years ago. After a few bad games I just lost interest in the series as a whole. Now, I mostly take cheap shots at it, like here. Going on the jokes from archaeological mistakes, I felt that mentioning this particular series was inevitable. First of all, this entire mysterious setting is kind of based on the third stage from Sonic 3, which not only have I never cleared, I have never really figured out what kind of ruins they were basing those on. Heck, I can't even be sure of what that brown quicksand-like stuff littering the level was; my best guess is mud, although it could just as easily have been diarrhea. My second jab on the series falls upon the second level of Sonic 3D Blast, a game I actually came close to beating (my grandma accidentally cut the power to my console of choice when I was on the second zone of the final level -_-). The stage was littered not only with ruins of unknown origin, but strange statues of the game's enemies, including that ugly worm thing I drew from memory above. So, along with my "casino level" jab at SonicTeam earlier, I think I've gotten out any bad feelings from my time with these games.

And now, allow me to shut up and talk about the ninja puffs shown here (each sold seperately). They were more early villains I made up, at first alien cereal then changed to ninja cereal. They're pretty much the first actual challenge our electrified piece of toast finds.

I went back and fixed all mistakes I had made in the word 'archaeology.' One would think that the weird kid who reads dictionaries for fun would notice that one sooner.

I'm moved in at a real college for once. Man, I swear they do all these orientation events just to wear freshmen out so they'll sleep better in these unfamiliar dorms. 'Tis a good plan, until the faculty realizes just how boring the events are. Also, the internet here is slow. Complaining over.

So I tried something a little new for the electricity coming off of ETM here. Hopefully I'll figure out more ways to make it look less weak. Also, I know that this is most certainly NOT how electricity works in real life, but I had already drawn that awesome foreshortened katana, and didn't feel like erasing it.

Oy, they work us early on in this program. First they gave us a Xacto knife, then assigned a project involving precision measuring and cutting. I think there's knife-shaped holes in the table now. Then I was assigned a paper. While reading half a book a day for another class. Fun.

Anyways, there's this that's finally done and out there. Not much else to say, except that those shurikens look wrong for some reason.

Well, project from heck #1, 2, and 3 done. now hopefully I can do a few more pages before #4 comes along.

I think this is actually the second time that any character has been called by name in the entire comic (The first was Margaret, remember?). I really should work on giving out character's names more in-storyline. Oh well, savor it while you can. I'll have to check the rest that I have to scan, but I don't think it happens again in ETM's case.

I also really like this storyline because I get to play with black and white in the ninja's outfits. I think they turned out pretty good here, although I may have to figure out some new method of highlighting for the eyes.

Urgh...What? What is this, a new comic? From me? Wow. I should really set more time aside for these. Maybe if I cut that stupid 'eating' thing out of my schedule.

Wait, that was my last excuse. Crap, I'm out already.

Anyways, when I initially drew this page, I thought it would be cute to emphasize the crazed mini-battle going on, so I intentionally drew the panels somewhat out of order. My bad. I do believe the correct order is:

4 1

2

765 3

8

9

...though, I could be wrong. Oh well. Today's punchline is actually quite simple; a wakizashi is like a katana, only smaller and is being used completely wrong here. Then again, ninjas didn't use katanas. I'm ranting now. Good night.

This one took a while. In addition to the madness in the last two panels, I also had school projects, overextended Spore empires, and a dying laptop to contend with. Meh, at least it did turn out nice. I especially do like that lazy orb of energy there. I've been trying to find ways to make the sparks coming off of ETM a bit more exciting, and it looks like I'm on to something.

This is also the last scanned page I currently have; I really have to get some more scanning done. Let's hope my laptop gets out of its little crash-every-45-minutes phase soon.

Also, I'm slowly building a mirrored archive on deviantArt here. I'll also put up all comments and extra art, including perhaps some behind-the-scenes concept stuff in between updates. That way, even if I get into another hiatus this year, there'll at least be something from me. DA isn't good for comic archives, but hopefully it'll be good for all the other stuff.

A very odd bird's-eye view here, not sure if I'll do that again. Not easy when your main character is basically two-dimensional.

I've also gone ahead and put some effort into finding a new font, since Comic Sans always looked a bit odd. This one is called Creamregular, and it actually looks somewhat like my own handwriting on those rare occasions when I write legibly, and even has that lean that us lefties have. I just found it more comfortable to use, and maybe I'll go back and update the text in the old pages.